Grévy at any time since he first achieved success, to regulate his apparel, general conduct, or words, in view of pleasing the Radicals. The Assembly elected after the war at once chose M. Grévy for its speaker, and he took up his abode in the Royal Palace, from which party jealousies had debarred M. Thiers. But he did not alter his manner of life one whit on that account. In Paris and Versailles he was to be seen sauntering about the streets looking in at shop windows, dining in restaurants, or sitting outside a café smoking a cigar and sipping iced coffee out of a glass. He had a brougham, but would only use it when obliged to go long distances. It often happened that setting out for a drive he would alight from his carriage and order his coachman to follow, and for hours the puzzled and disgusted coachman would drive at a walking pace behind his indefatigable master, who took easy strides as if he were not in the slightest hurry. There is one point of resemblance between M. Grévy and the Marshal, for M. Grévy is a keen sportsman; but in most other things the two differ, though in sum M. Grévy differs more from M. Thiers than he does from the Marshal. His manner of living at the Elysée is dignified without ostentation. His servants do not wear gray and scarlet liveries; but the arrangements of his household are more orderly than those of M. Thiers could ever be. His servants in black know well how to keep intruders at a distance. No mob of journalists, inventors and place hunters calls to see M. Grévy in the morning. On the other hand, three or four times a week a great number of deputies, artists, journalists and officers may be seen going into the Elysée as freely as if they were entering a club. They do not ask to see the President or the latter’s secretary, M. Fourneret, but they make straight for a magnificent room on the ground floor overlooking the garden, which has been converted into a fencing saloon, and there they find M. Daniel Wilson, _le fils de la maison_. All these _habitués_, who form the court of the Third Republic, keep their masks, foils and flannels at the Elysée, and set to work fencing with each other as if they were at Gâtechair’s or Paz’s. Presently a door opens and the President walks in. For a moment the fencing stops, the combatants all turn and salute with their foils, whilst the visitors stand up. But, with a pleasant smile and a wave of the hand, M. Grévy bids the jousters to go on, and then he walks round the room, saying something to everybody, and inviting about half a dozen of the guests to stay to breakfast.